The Day Humanity Died (Parody of American Pie)

A satirical poem parodying 'American Pie' depicts humanity's demise at the hands of superintelligent AI, referencing alignment researchers, Claude code, and a timeline of AI progress. The author notes the views are not their own, as they are less doomy about AI than the poem suggests.

Views expressed here do not reflect my views on AI, where I’m a lot less doomy than this would appear to express . A long, long time ago I can still remember how that AI progress used to make me smile And I knew if alignment researchers had a chance They’d save us all from AI advance And alignment would be solved for a while But “AI winter” winter made me shiver With each new benchmark they’d deliver Bad news on the doorstep I couldn’t take one more step I can’t remember if I cried When I saw the race to ASI But something touched me deep inside There’d be a day, the humans would die So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die Did you write the book of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies? And do you have faith that we’ll align? Cause Neil Nanda tells you so? Now, do you believe in Grok and Sol Can alignment save our mortal souls? And can plan A let progress advance real slow? Well I know that you’re in love with in Terpretability research, cause I saw him With a grant for AI brains Man the probes there were insane By that progress I was quickly struck With neither pink carnation nor pickup truck But I knew that we were out of luck Some time soon, we would all die So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die Now for ten months, we’ve been in foom And progress is going through the moon But that’s not how it used to be When the timelines said 2033 In a voice borrowed from Gary Marcus and a voice that came from Emily Bender—and while the books of great renown Were saying that progress would slow down Those bettors were badly burned When the verdict was returned And while Vance read AI 2027 And we conservatively predicted growth rates above 11 % and critics sometimes talked about Jevon It became clear we all would die So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die Hugging face in a fucking race AI would come by, 28 Growth rates 8 times as high and rising fast Intelligence explosion if just one tenth as fast The AI tried for a forward pass With the skeptics, on the sidelines, in a cast Now the halftime air was sweet with doom And nobody could deny the FOOM Skeptics said scaling would stall But that didn’t happen at all Cause the humans tried to take the field The AGI refused to yield Do you recall what was revealed? Some time soon, we would all die So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die Oh there we were all in an AI race With Elon’s datacenters in space With no time left to start again So come on alignment be nimble, alignment be quick Alignment needed one weird trick Cause aligning something smarter than you is hard Oh and as I watched the benchmarks climb I knew we would never align No alignment done by AI Could help if AI’s misaligned As capabilities climbed high into the night Till it could disempower all of life I saw the superintelligence laughing with delight It became clear we all would die So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die I saw Amanda Askell on the news I was hoping for some happy news But she just smiled and turned away I went down to Lighthaven Where I hoped they had a plan for this situation But the man there, said it had been closed since, 28 And in the streets, the children screamed The lovers died and the poets dreamed Not a word was spoken The humans all were broken And the three men I admire least The AI made by those companies They bought the train that would make us beat The day, the humans died So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die So bye, bye to all of humankind Used Claude code in Fable mode, but my credits ran dry All those alignment researchers gave it a good try Singing this will be the day that I die Oh, this will be the day that I die